-Blake

I would also suggest you snag a copy of Learning Perl, 3rd Ed. which is a most excellent title that reads as if you were actually sitting at the course taught by the authors. Plus, it's on sale. Buy now.

--f

Step 2: Buy a copy of Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, or any other well-known Linux distribution. I recommend Red Hat if you're just getting started, but each has its own merits and Red Hat by no means could be definitively called the best.

Step 3: Find someone who knows their way around Linux and ask them to help you install it. You could do it yourself (the distros are getting so slick these days!) but Linux is best experienced as a community. Finding someone else who can help you get started will lower your learning curve and frustration level significantly, and most people who use Linux enjoy turning others on to the joys of Linux.

Step 4: Find the simplest Perl book you can get your hands on. Check out the recommendations of the other posters. I learned from "Learning Perl in 21 Days," and though I have moved on to much more condensed material these days, it was a great book to learn by. And curiously enough, it took around 21 days. (I was a newbie at the time.) I wouldn't buy a book like Larry Wall's Programming Perl if you've never programmed before. You'll buy it eventually, but for now you want something utterly simple and straight forward.

Step 5: Open a command prompt on your new Linux box.

Step 6: Type

perl -e "Hello World!\n"
[download]

Hope this helps!

type perl -e "Hello World!\n"

Ofcourse that will generate an error message:

remco@grolsch remco$ perl -e "Hello World!\n"
bash: !\n": event not found

You might want to try this instead:

remco@grolsch remco$ perl -e 'print ("Hello World!\n")'
Hello World!

i've been using linux for almost a year now and i'm fairly competent, and i frequent sites like www.linuxnewbie.org when i have questions or problems. i'll be delving further into *nix in the spring when i go back to school, but i wouldn't say i've mastered ANYTHING just yet... thanks all for the replies!!

To answer your fundamental question, inkedmn, I'd have to say that learning Perl is a great way to learn programming. I programmed C/C++ for years, but never felt I understood it until I picked up Perl.

As for ways to learn, personally, I do not like any of O'Reilly's Perl books - at least not the three or four I've looked at. My personal favorite is the Coriolis Open Press book, Perl Black Book by Steven Holzner. Good stuff - easy, almost conversational reading and goes quite in depth on most topics a newbie is interested in.

Good luck,
{NULE}

2/ I think you should go to on-line tutorials and follow the beginner tutorials.

the Programming Perl book can be fairly advanced, so don't lose hope if it talks about concepts that fly right over your head. Concentrate on working through the examples one at a time, and keep at it until it works.

You also need to do the tutorials because the oreilley books are a little too much one person's version of the language and it really helps to get other peoples' view of how to do things. Here are a couple of tutorials I picked off google:
www.comp.leeds.ac.uk
rob's win32 perl tutorial
Picking Up perl

Good luck,

hackmare